Under-occupancy Charge

Debate between Lord Freud and Lord Taylor of Goss Moor

Thursday 28th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Freud]

I do not have the figures to which the noble Baroness referred, so I will have to check the figures we have and write to her on that.

Effectively, with this appeal we are joining these two cases to a number of others for the Supreme Court to look at the whole thing in one context. It is, essentially, about whether the discretionary housing payment system is appropriate for handling these particular hard cases, which the High Court has, in practice, accepted as the right way to ameliorate those cases, up to now.

[Lord Taylor of Goss Moor (LD)]

My Lords, my former colleague, Andrew George, brought forward proposals in the previous Parliament to exempt those who had particular needs for an extra room from the bedroom tax—such as those with disabilities needing a carer—and, indeed, to exempt those who had not been offered suitable alternative accommodation. I have heard what the Minister has said about this case. I do not believe that, outside the Government, anyone believes that the kind of cases that went to appeal are a matter for discretion.

The Minister may say that a wise local authority will exercise its discretion appropriately, but the general public will ask: how can it possibly be a matter for discretion when there is any chance that they might not get that support when they so evidently need the space within their accommodation? Nor do I believe that the public understand why people are penalised when a local authority is unable to offer them suitable alternative accommodation. I say simply to the Minister that I do not believe the Government are doing themselves any service at all in pressing this to the Supreme Court. I have no particular wish to encourage support for the Government but I assume that the Minister would wish to encourage such support, so I really beg him to think again. It is in the interests of all involved. Most of all, I believe that, on this, the Government are not with the people.

[Lord Freud]

The issue here is that there quite a lot of particular circumstances where one would feel that people should not have the spare room subsidy removed. It is extraordinarily hard to define all those cases. That is why the Government took the decision in 2010-11, when this was introduced, to have this mechanism of a discretionary fund so that the hard cases can be looked after. By and large, that system has been pretty effective in making sure that in those hard cases the people are looked after.